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my-forgotten-notepad · 7 months

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DND Idea: The Thompson Extension

I have an idea for a dnd campagin; the Thompson Extension. A grand labyrinth of wild and alien chambers all sprawling out from underneath a lone home in some blue-collar all-american fictional city of Origin. Before I dive into recolouring it into a DND campaign/dungeon idea; I feel like its best to give a summary of the Thompson Extension first, to give a feel for the way the extension and the surrounding region could be used as inspiration for DMs.

The Thompson Extension (Made by Tiktok user baddreams1985) is a subterranean structure that spills out deep into the earth in ways that fail to submit to the rules and strictures of the laws of reality. The Extension was constructed under as of yet unknown means and is plagued by strange and terrible powers; often driving those exposed to madness or delusional compulsions. It was uncovered after Douglas Thompson was being investigated for fraud and tax evasion.

The building, The Thompson Extension, and the effects within both and the surrounding area are being constantly investigated as more and more strange and bizarre events seem to spawn from the Thompson family's actions and from the alien and nonsensical labyrinth of chambers deep beneath their home.

As the investigation grew, investigators gathered and cross-referenced data, journals, affects, and interviews of the people within the city of Origin; the results of which simply changed how the Thompson family was viewed, and potential leads for how the damnable extension came into existence. Such as Douglas Thompson's delusions of grandeur, his god complex, lying, thievery, cheating, and outright neglect of his home, wife, and children. Art over the intervening decades all seem to focus on prisons, mazes, freedom, transhumanism, and horses; a possible link to an urban legend known as the Skewbald Mare. The forests of Origin are home to several potent medicinal and poisonous fungi, mosses, and other forms of plant life; the majority of which engage and modify synapse and neurological responses.

Old video tapes and partially encoded diaries and letters provide investigators with the impression of several cults or paranormal societies acting in concert, but not all for the same goal; often clash and cause chaos in the pursuit of destroying their enemies. Some worshipping the Void and the Skewbald Mare, others fostering alien parasites that violate the human form beyond reason and description. There even being several layers and decades of bureaucratic and governmental corruption, abuse, and cover-ups to hide and obscure the length and enormity of the issues within the city of Origin.

Susan Thompson (nee Leefarr) seemed based off of journals seems to be a pained and utterly beleaguered housewife. Aware of the dire straits her family was in, the strain of her husband's neglect as well as the length and sordid depths of his shameless sexual escapades and ego. She found solace in her art; often small and rather abstract pieces reimaginings buildings, rooms, and the natural world that was always so visible from her kitchen window. After the family's dissapearance, some of her pieces wildly and hideously distorted, others quickly began to rot and the materials were swiftly tested. Each painting had trace elements of blood, bone, teeth, nails, hair and skin tissue within them; the all the material links back to a single individual: Susan Thompson.

In an interview with one of Susan's neighbours, Judie Sanderson calmly remarked that Susan went from boastful to frightened about her home in a matter of weeks. "She was acting real queer about it too! She starts telling me she's finally got her dream kitchen, a playroom for the kiddos, and even a new bathroom ... One fine day she comes over, looking like she's been up and put through the wringer. We were on my front porch, just sipping our coffee and she goes "Judie, it just keeps growing".... But she just looked at me with her eyes hollow like a burnt out Douglas Fir and says "If I sleep, it'll get bigger" The second-hand account from Judie Sanderson seems to strongly imply that somehow Susan Thompson was key to the development of the extension. This interview and the bizarre events surrounding her art seem to impyl that some force or power was or is capable to pull from her desires, conscious or otherwise and slam them together to fashion a new chamber, a new physical reality.

Damaged audio from Jack Caversham's attempt on Mr. Thompson's life only seems to highlight Susan's role in the extension's existence. "Susan! She is the beacon. The Celestial umbilical cord reaching into the heavens!... Her art, her unending passion, something you never even recognised is the key!" The recording shows that Jack worships the Skewbald Mare, believing that something akin to the Thompson Extension is needed to free it from terrible and near incomprehensible cosmic prison. The damaged audio only further strengthens the validity of Judie Sanderson's commentary and account; that somehow the governing power of the Thompson Extension originally pulled from Susan's artistic talents and vibrant imagination to fashion itself into reality; also meaning for horrors that dwell within the extension could also be linked to Susan Thompson's mind and creative capacity.

Tldr The Extension is a seemingly occult creation that was forged via unkown means (most likely via occult artefacts and dark rituals), the original construction of the extension seems to have been guided and nurtured by Susan Thompson's dreams, but radically spiralled out of her or Douglas Thompson's control. The Thompson Extension seems in some tangential way is connected to corrupt politicians, alien parasites, cults and an enigmated figure known as the Skewbald Mare.

Now here is the part where I take this massive baseline description of Baddreams1985's work and transpose it into a dungeon or a fully-fledged campaign idea.

Option 1) The Thompson Extension has all of its darker elements wiped clean (so no body horror, no psychological horror, no dangerous cults, no familial neglect or cheating etc) and the extension is simply a rogue experiment into the Far Realms gone horribly wrong (or right). Causing a breach between the Material Plane and the Far Realms, causing reality to warp and splinter; creating new rooms, making old ones larger, smaller as more and more of the corrosive power of the Far Realm continues to leak through.

Adventurers are then tasked by the colleagues of the archmage/scientist/professor who caused the breach to enter their home; delve deep within the unnatural extension; reaffirm the boundary line between realities and save their colleague. The Dm could utilise warped NPCs, highlighting that the players aren't the first group to be sent into the extension to repair and save reality, the extension could be a ploy by a malicious Beholder or a tribe of Ilithids seeking to carve pathways into and out of reality to better their positions for ensuring their dominate and dark future succeeds.

Option 2) This option is more or less Option 1, but instead of academics causing the breach and you needing to fix it; the violation between the Far Realms and the Material Plane is caused by cultists. Those that worship and seek the transformative might of the Skewbald Mare to enact it's will upon the static nature of reality.

This campaign can start off as a race against time before delving into a prototype of the supernatural labyrinth to prevent the Skewbald Mare from being unshackled. This approach would give players to investigate the cult and their motives as well as try and acquire the necessary tools to protect themselves from the cult and if needed; the Skewbald Mare itself.

Option 3) This option goes all in on the content of the OG work. The inciting incident could have been the result of a fantatical cult member and scholastic academic believing himself meant for grander, greater things than his menial role within both his institution and fringe movement of faith.

The cultist uses his powers and an expediently arranged wedding to a maiden of the goddess of creativity to set things in motion as he blasphemes and stains the house with his power and the dark power of the Skewbald Mare. But his actions are hopeless, impotent in some cases; so overtime the cultist begins to commit crimes, theft, charming, adultery, neglect and destruction; all to further his own ends. The cultist no longer wishes to serve the Skewbald Mare, he wishes to supplant the ancient beast; kill it and wear its might like fine silk robes and proclaim himself god.

His motives, actions, and their consequences draw great power to him, allowing for his darkest and most profane desires to finally become acheivable. But, that also meant his former colleagues and those he once called brother and sister knew of his shame and his sin. The resulting cloak and dagger campaigns, the black rituals and the resulting violent chaos; the cultist, his plagued wife and their two daughters dissapear and the nightmare labyrinth forged beneath their home begins to scream out to the world above. Each day, some new evil seems to spill out and plague the bodies, hearts, and mind of those within the citadel this cursed labyrinth lays beneath.

The local Lord; a bloated and conniving figure has bemoaned the fact that none wish to live within the region and that his wealth is drying up and his position politically, economically and socially is swiftly eroding away beneath him. The Lord quickly hires a band of adventurers to go into the region; offering whatever terms, upright and post-quest payment and title gifts to them so long as they manage to restore order to the region and finally put an end to the lasting remnant of the cultist's hideous work.

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